zlacker

>>GavCo+(OP)
It turns out that Dahl was a real antisemite, to me that is more of an issue: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/dec/06/roald-dahl-fam...

>>Michae+LO
I know very little about the beliefs or personal lives of nearly any artist whose work I enjoy, but I know that most people carry beliefs and histories that I would disagree with, so I have to assume that this is no less true of the artists.

It seems like fretting over the occasional artist that’s been “outed” is a convenient way to pretend that rest of them are somehow saints, when in reality nearly all of them have likely said awful things and treated people quite terribly sometimes. While exceptions might be made for egregious offenders, often the only real difference between the two groups is a lack of visibility into their personal lives. So why get so invested?

>>swatco+3T
Things do have a historic context, if one admits to hating Jews in the second half of the twentieth century then that speaks an awful lot about his attitudes as a writer.

>>Michae+OU
> that speaks an awful lot about his attitudes as a writer

How?

Especially when, to my knowledge, there is no anti-Jewish content in his children's books.

>>oska+PZ
See this post by @jasonhansel https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34849383#34853283

>>Michae+H51
Ok, I read the article [1] linked in that comment and I think it's mostly junk. To give one example, the author's picking on the large noses and wigs of the witches as somehow mirroring negative portrayals of Jews is a massive stretch. The stereotypes of witches include all sorts of negative prejudices against older women. Older people have larger noses (and ears), as their faces 'shrink in' a bit (and I think cartilage also can keep growing). Losing their hair or having 'strange' hair is also a prejudicial stereotype against older, unmarried, 'strange' women (because hair is considered such a defining aspect of 'normal' femininity).

The linking of 'secret societies who run the world' to an anti-Jewish message (to the readers of the books) is also a huge stretch and I think it wrong. That the people who actually 'run the world' are hidden was evidently part of Dahl's mindset. It's not an unusual mindset. Dahl attributed some powerful Jews as (at least part of) that 'secret society' in the real world, yes. I've read those anti-Jewish quotes from Dahl before and his thinking on the matter is pretty clear. But Matilda is a work of fiction. It's not at all strange that he reflected those 'secret power group' conceptions in one of his books with a cabal of witches actually running a fictional book world. But I don't think he in any way intended the book to be an explicit analogy to what he thought about our actual world situation, i.e. I don't think witches are meant to be a stand-in for Jews, and the big noses and wigs thing is pretty weak sauce to use to make that case, as I've already addressed. Contrast Matilda here to Orwell's Animal Farm which was written as an explicit analogy to the real world, and Orwell made clear links, e.g. Snowball == Trotsky, showing that he intended it as such. While Orwell's work is partly a warning against communism (and partly just a good story, well told), Dahl's Matilda isn't a warning against 'powerful secret societies who run the world', let alone Jewish ones; the secret, malignant society is simply a good fictional plot device and one that's been used many times before (sometimes with explicit prejudice, sometimes not).

[1] https://www.heyalma.com/is-roald-dahls-the-witches-antisemit...

>>oska+X81
Damn, I wish I could stretch like this